Much could be said concerning the interesting amalgam of Old Testament language and speculative Greek philosophy that appears to result in the mash-up of John 1, but in my mind it only caused me to wonder if there were other echoes of Genesis found in the Gospel of John, in the same way that repeated reminders of Exodus appear in Matthew. Below is what I could come up with after consulting a number of resources.
But before looking at specific passages in John, I must point out the overwhelming emphasis on the number “seven” in his Gospel. This number is symbolic of perfection or completion, a meaning first established in Genesis 2:1-3 in which God's work was completed on the seventh day.
Some examples of this emphasis in John include the seven appearances of: boastful “we know” statements, witnesses to Jesus, “written” applied to Scripture, “love”(agape), “soul” (psuche), references to the Father’s “name,” “in my name,” “I have said these things to you,” “after these,” “in/at the last day,” Jesus' hour, and “Thomas.” Jesus is called “Rabbi” seven times as well as being sent by the Father on an equal number of occurrences. Multiples of seven detected in the text are “true,” “hour...come,” “behold!” as an exclamation, Jesus being called “king,” and the noun “witness” (14 times each); “water,” “write,” “truth” and “sheep” (21x); “send” (apostello) (28x); “glory/glorify” (42x); “work” as noun and verb (35x); “to love” (two Greek verbs) (49x); “know” (ginoskein) (56x); “the Jews” (70x) and, very significantly, “believe” (98x = 7 x 7 x 2).
Culpepper notes several individual passages in John's Gospel that are divided into seven scenes, including the discourse on bread in ch. 6 (two parallel sets of seven), healing of the blind man in ch. 9, and Jesus' trial in chs.18-19. In the first of these passages, the phrase “down from heaven” appears 7 times.
The statistics regarding John's use of OT quotations are also illuminating:
7 quotations from Psalms
7 introductory formulas reading “in order that...might be fulfilled”
14 explicit quotations
I am only going to go through the first half of John's Gospel (the so-called Book of Signs) since the last half concerning his death and resurrection has many parallels in the Synoptic Gospels.
John 1:1-18 // Genesis 1:1-5
While all scholars see the above parallel, there is one important difference that is pointed out by scholars:
“This locates Jesus' existence in eternity past with God and sets the stage for John's lofty Christology, which is unmatched by any of the other canonical Gospels.” (Kostenberger)
“Unlike Genesis...John's 'In (the) beginning' refers not to the beginning of creation but to the undeterminable period prior to creation.” (Hamilton)
Borgen has analyzed vv. 6-18 as “an elaboration of pivotal terms and phrases in vv. 1-5,” to use Hamilton's wording. This elaboration takes the form of a chiasm:
1. The word, God (1-2)
2. All things came through Him (v. 3)
3. The light (vv. 4-5)
3'. The light (vv. 7-9)
2'. The world was made through Him (vv. 10-13)
1'. The word, God (vv. 14-18)
This particular example of literary analysis is rather doubtful since it leaves out the point of most emphasis, verse 6. But since that verse describes John the Baptist, it is highly doubtful that the author wishes us to feel that the fact of his coming is more important than the identity of Christ Himself.
John 1:14 // Genesis 6:3
John says that the Word (Jesus) became flesh. The Jerusalem Bible notes, “The 'flesh' is man considered as a frail and mortal being” as in Genesis 6:3.
John 1:29 // Genesis 22
John the Baptist declares to a crowd that Jesus is “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” We are probably meant to think of the watershed story in Genesis 22 where Abraham follows God in obedience to sacrifice his only son Isaac. When Isaac asks his father “Where is the lamb for a burnt offering?,” Abraham replies cryptically, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” This is a prophecy of the Lamb of God to come.
John 1:32 // Genesis 1:2
“The Spirit descending from heaven like a dove” at Jesus' baptism is a reminder of Genesis 1:2 in which the Spirit (or wind) from God hovers over the formless deep.
John 1:42 // Genesis 17:5,15; 32:28
Jesus renames Simon as Cephas (“Peter”). In doing so, he is acting in the tradition of God the Father who renames Abram as Abraham (Gen. 17:5), Sarai as Sarah (Gen. 17:15), and Jacob as Israel (Gen. 32:28). This last example is especially in mind in light of the very next parallel.
John 1:47 // Genesis 27:35; 32:28
Nathanael is said to be an Israelite without deceit. Carr points out that Nathanael may be seen to represent “those in Israel who have no deceit, i.e., none of the qualities of Jacob before he became Israel.”
John 1:51 // Genesis 28:12
Continuing the Jacob references, Jesus tells Nathanael that he “will see the heavens opening and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” as a clear allusion to Jacob's dream when he was fleeing from Esau. “Jesus is the 'new Bethel,' the place where God is revealed, where heaven and earth, God and humanity, meet.” (Kostenberger)
John 2:5 // Genesis 41:55
The words Mary says to the caterers at the wedding at Cana when they have run out of wine (“Do whatever he tells you to do”) are the exact words that Pharaoh says to the people who need food, referring in this case to Joseph. So we see one more way in which Joseph serves as a type of Jesus to come.
John 3:5-8 // Genesis 2:7
Just as Adam was a creation set apart from the rest of the created universe by the fact that God breathed the breath of life into him, Jesus explains to Nicodemus that he needs to be born again of the Spirit. Keep in mind that in both Hebrew and Greek, the concepts of wind and breath are closely related.
John 3:16 // Genesis 22:2,12,16
Kostenberger feels that John is making a “probable” allusion to Abraham's “only son” Isaac. “what Abraham was spared from doing at the last minute, God actually did – he gave his one and only Son (cf. Rom. 8:32).”
John 3:28 // Genesis 24:7; 32:3,45; 46:28
“The phrase 'sent ahead' is used in the OT for messengers sent ahead of a given person.” (Kostenberger)
John 4 contains several references to Genesis. When Jesus enters Samaria, he comes to the city of Sychar, located “near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there...” Thus, at the same time we are reminded of two events in Genesis. The first occurs in Genesis 33:18-19 where we are told that Jacob bought plot of land from the sons of Hamor. It is usually inferred from Genesis 48:21-22 and Joshua 24:32 that Jacob subsequently gave Joseph this land.
The second reference is even more germane since it refers to two different well incidents in Genesis in which a man and woman have a conversation. Thus, in Genesis 24, Abraham's servant meets Rebekah at a well and asks her for a drink of water for himself and his camels. He gives her expensive gifts and she “ran and told her mother's household about these things.” Of course, she eventually becomes the wife of Isaac. Note the following similarities to John 4 in which Jesus is traveling in that same territory and meets a woman at the well. He also asks for a drink of water; offers her an even more valuable gift of eternal life; and she leaves the well to tell the people in the town what he said to her.
The second well incident is just as pertinent. In Genesis 29, Jacob comes to a well where Rachel went to water her sheep. He provides water for her and her sheep and reveals that he is a close relative. At this point “she ran and told her father.”
In John 4:20, the Samaritan woman alludes to the mountain where “the ancestors” worshiped. These would include both Abraham (Genesis 12:7) and Jacob (Genesis 33:20) since they built altars in that region.
There is another possible parallel in chapter 4 between these two widely separated books. When the woman declares that she has no husband, Jesus says that she has had five husbands and is now living with a man not her husband. O.M. Hendricks at this point notes that the assumption that she has been divorced multiple times may not be correct. He notes the story of Tamar in Genesis 38 in which her first two husbands die and she ends up having a child by a man “who is not her husband.”
In John 5:16-17, the Jews begin persecuting Jesus because he had been healing on the Sabbath. Jesus' response comes from a reference in Genesis 2:3 when he says “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” This comment only makes sense when one considers that Jewish rabbis at the time agreed that, in fact, God does continue working on the Sabbath, especially in the decision as to who is born or dies on that day. Another opinion was that God actually created the concept of “rest” on the seventh day.
John 5:22 // Genesis 18:25
This is more a case of clarification than parallelism. The Genesis passage stated that judgment is God's sole prerogative. Jesus, however, announces that the Father has delegated that responsibility to Him.
John 5:37
This comment by Jesus that no one has heard God's voice or seen him appears to be contradicted by a number of OT examples found in Genesis and elsewhere. For the hearing of God's voice, see Genesis 7:1-4; 12:1-3. For “seeing” Him in one form or another, see Genesis 18:1-2; 32:24-30. Kostenberger resolves this issue by his opinion that Jesus was only speaking of Israel's experience in the wilderness.
John 6:20 // Genesis 26:24
In comforting the apostles when they were in the storm at sea, Jesus uses the very words that God used several times in the OT, beginning with Gen. 26:24 – “Do not be afraid.”
John 6:52-64 describes that many of the Jews are totally turned off by Jesus' proclamation that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood. The latter would have been especially abhorrent to them since levitical law demanded that the blood of even ritually clean animals had to be drained out before eating it. But this regulation actually originated even earlier, in Genesis 9:4-5 where God proclaims to Noah that they “shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” This is because the life belongs to God Himself.
John 7:16 // Genesis 41:16
Jesus tells the Jews in the temple, “My teaching is not mine but his who sent me.” Similarly, when Pharaoh asks Joseph to interpret his dream, he replies, “It is not I; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.”
John 7:22 // Genesis 17:9-14
John mentions the rite of circumcision in saying, “Moses gave you circumcision (it is, of course, not from Moses, but from the patriarchs)...” The correction refers to Genesis 17 where the rite is actually instituted by God in speaking to Abraham.
John 8:31-38 // Genesis 16, 21
In this dialogue between Jesus and the Jews, he disputes whether they are truly children of Abraham as they claim. Instead, he hints that they are just slaves in the house who have no permanent status there. The reference may well be to the slave girl Hagar and her son Ishmael who ended up being kicked out of Abraham's household, a story which was later used by Paul as a basic for his only allegory.
John 8:42-44 // Genesis 31-7
The conversation above continues with Jesus next denying that the Jews he is speaking with are children of God. Instead, he says that they are children of the devil, who was a liar and a murderer from the beginning. Now again we turn back to the early chapters of Genesis when Satan lied to Adam and Eve, which led to their eventual death. We could also apply Jesus' words to the literal murder of Abel by Cain, though there is no specific mention of Satan's involvement in that action.
John 8:52-59
Finally, this dialogue concludes with the Jews attempting to prove Jesus wrong when he said that one believing in Him would never taste death. They cite the example of Abraham, who certainly did die. This eventually ends with Jesus revealing to them that He had talked with Abraham and existed even before Abraham did. This could perhaps be referring to Genesis 18:1-15 since verses 1-2 state that God appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre in the form of three men. It is not too much of a stretch to consider this a reference to the Trinity, including the pre-existent Christ.
The Jerusalem Bible notes: “Abraham saw Christ's 'day'...but 'from a distance'...because he saw it in the birth of the promised Isaac...which was an event prophetic of Christ. Jesus claims to be the ultimate fulfilment of this promise made to Abraham; he is Isaac according to the spirit.” (See Genesis 21:1-21)
John 9 // Genesis 19:11
Genesis 19:11 is a story of a whole group of men in Sodom being struck blind by God due to their evil ways. Similarly, John 9 is the extended story not only of a blind man being given sight, but also a group of hardhearted Pharisees becoming progressively more blinded by their unbelief. As Jesus says in 9:39, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”
One other specific parallel between John 9 and Genesis takes us back again to the beginning of that latter book. God creates new life by molding man from the clay of the ground and breathing into him His spirit. In the same manner, Jesus creates brand new eyes for seeing out of the dirt combined with spittle from his mouth (v. 6).
John 10:1-21 // Genesis 49:24
The extended good shepherd discourse of this chapter in John usually reminds us of David's Psalm 23, but the image of God (and by extension, Jesus) as a shepherd is actually first mentioned in Gen. 49:24.
The “other sheep” mentioned in v. 16 may refer to all the people scattered after the tower of Babel event (Genesis 11:9). Also see John 11:52.
John 12:46 // Genesis 1:3
This conclusion to the first half of John's Gospel brings us somewhat back to where we began, Genesis 1. Just as the first thing created by God was the literal light, Jesus now states that He is figuratively the light come into the world so that everyone who believes in him would not have to remain in the dark (see also John 8:12). Just a word of caution at this point: That does not at all imply, as I heard one Bible teacher strongly hint, that Jesus was created on the first day. That belief is not only poor exegesis but also a definite heresy.
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